Stubborn Tiny Lights vs Clustering Darkness...

It’s 2010, so if you’re in a post-rock band, you better either be writing exceptional tunes, or be innovating and revolutionizing the genre. Otherwise, you’re running a pretty good chance of getting lost in the shuffle. For Cedar Falls, Iowa’s Stubborn Tiny Lights vs Clustering Darkness Forever OK? (how’s that for a Wheel of Fortune word puzzle?), the first option works best. Not once throughout the sixty-plus minute The Infinite Regress can they claim to be helping post-rock evolve, but that’s a moot point, because you’ll probably be too busy getting lost inside its sonic caves and colossal build-ups to care. That’s the kind of album we’re dealing with here – it makes you move past your critic mindset and gets you excited about getting lost in its instrumental ire.

Other than setting the music up with cinematic words, the track titles (and numbers) don’t matter much, since there are awfully long pauses of silence even within the tracks themselves. But if you’re a post-rock fan, you don’t really need rigorously defined tracks anyway, because you already know how these songs play out: gentle, tingling openings lead to escalating build ups, which then lead to wild climaxes that resolve into gentle, tingling guitars again. Then comes the silence. What makes The Infinite Regress so solid, though, is the greatness with which the band executes these structures. Every ascent and subsequent descent is dipped in violent passion; strings frantically a-whir, guitars and drums pounding, sweat dripping. There’s even a part in “Through Valleys” that turns some Junius-inspired vocals into a vivid climax.

So don’t be disappointed if you were looking for a boundary-pusher. The Infinite Regress never claimed to be anything of that sort. But don’t be surprised when you find yourself being enveloped by it and not caring anymore, either. That’s what the album did promise to be: an attention-holder. Otherwise, just let the music do the persuading.